Website URLs – SEO Best Practices

Your website URLs are important for search engine optimization, just like title tags and page content.

Sections and Sub-Section Names in URLs
When creating a section, consider all of the pages that will be located under that section. You want to be sure you don’t name the section the same thing as one of your pages. Duplicate content will count against you when search engines index your pages.

For example:

www.acumium.com/online/services/website-services.cmsx – GOOD

www.acumium.com/services/services.cmsx – BAD

www.acumium.com/website/website-services/website-services.cmsx – BAD

Keyword Usage in URLs
Use your chosen keywords in your URLs and consider how people will be searching for content on your site. For example, on acumium.com, we have a resources section, but we know people often search with the phrase “how to…” so we focused more on this keyword phrase in our URL structure. This also helps avoid duplication in the URL.

www.acumium.com/online/how-to/website-resources.cmsx – GOOD

www.acumium.com/online/resources/online-resources.cmsx – NOT AS EFFECTIVE

Remove Useless Words
Remove the extra, useless words unless they are part of your keyword strategy. Words like: “a, our, for, and, the,” etc. are not needed. This is usually important on product pages or for articles with long page names. For example, for this article on How to Write Successful Website URLs and Page Names:

www.acumium.com/articles/how-to-write-successful-website-urls-and-page-names.cmsx – NOT AS EFFECTIVE

www.acumium.com/articles/website-url-seo-best-practices.cmsx – GOOD

Page Names in URLs
When planning your site structure and page names, remember that you will need a landing page for each section. Again, avoid duplicate content. If your section is called “internet marketing,” consider naming your landing page “online marketing” or “website internet marketing.” You will want to consult your keyword list as well as the content of the page to determine this. Here are two ways to accomplish this: